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decrease the need for surveillance. Resources used for surveillance are wasted in the sense
that they are unavailable for the achievement of collective goals.
D4. A deployable agent is one who is uncritically obedient to directives perceived as
charismatically legitimate. A deployable agent can be relied on to continue to carry out the
wishes of the collectivity regardless of his own hedonic interests and in the absence of any
external controls. Deployability can be operationalized as the likelihood that the individual
will continue to comply with hitherto ego-dystonic demands of the collectivity (e.g.,
mending, ironing, mowing the lawn, smuggling, rape, child abuse, murder) when not under
surveillance.
D5. Brainwashing is defined as an observable set of transactions between a charismatically
structured collectivity and an isolated agent of the collectivity with the goal of transforming
the agent into a deployable agent. Brainwashing is thus a process of ideological
resocialization carried out within a structure of charismatic authority.
The brainwashing process may be operationalized as a sequence of well-defined and
potentially observable phases. These hypothesized phases are: (1) identity stripping, (2)
identification, and (3) symbolic death/rebirth. The operational definition of brainwashing
refers to the specific activities attempted, whether or not they are successful, as they are
either observed directly by the ethnographer or reported in official or unofficial accounts by
members or ex-members. Although the exact order of phases and specific steps within
phases may vary from group to group, we should always expect to see the following
features, or their functional equivalents, in any brainwashing system: (1) the constant
fluctuation between assault and leniency and (2) the seemingly endless process of
confession, re-education, and refinement of confession.
D6. Hyper Credulity is defined as a disposition to accept uncritically all charismatically
ordained beliefs. All lovers of literature and poetry are familiar with ―that willing suspension
of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.‖ Hyper credulity occurs when this
state of mind, which, in most of us, is occasional and transitory, is transformed into a stable
disposition. Hyper credulity falls between hyper suggestibility on the one hand and stable
conversion of belief on the other. Its operational hallmark is plasticity in the assumption of
deeply held convictions at the behest of an external authority. This is an other-directed form
of what Robert Lifton has called the protean identity state.
D7. Relational Enmeshment is defined as a state of being in which self-esteem depends
upon belonging to a particular collectivity. It may be operationalized as immersion in a
relational network with the following characteristics: exclusivity (high ratio of in-group to
out-group bonds), interchangeability (low level of differentiation in affective ties between
one alter and another), and dependency (reluctance to sever or weaken ties for any
reason). In a developmental context, something similar to this has been referred to by
Bowlby as anxious attachment.
D8. Exit Costs are defined as the subjective costs experienced by an individual who is
contemplating leaving a collectivity. Obviously, the higher the perceived exit costs, the
greater will be the reluctance to leave. Exit costs may be operationalized as the magnitude
of the bribe necessary to overcome them. A person who is willing to leave if we pay him
$1,000 experiences lower exit costs than one who is not willing to leave for any payment
less than $1,000,000. With regard to cults, the exit costs are most often spiritual and
emotional rather than material which makes measurement in this way more difficult but not
impossible.
Hypotheses
Not all charismatic organizations engage in brainwashing. We therefore need a set of
hypotheses that will allow us to test empirically whether any particular charismatic system

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attempts to practice brainwashing and with what effect. The brainwashing model asserts
twelve hypotheses about the role of brainwashing in the production of uncritical obedience.
These hypotheses are all empirically testable.
This model begins with an assumption that charismatic leaders are capable of creating
organizations that are easy and attractive to enter (even though they may later turn out to
be difficult and painful to leave). There are no hypotheses, therefore, to account for how
charismatic cults obtain members. It is assumed that an abundant pool of potential recruits
to such groups is always available. The model assumes that charismatic leaders, using
nothing more than their own intrinsic attractiveness and persuasiveness, are initially able to
gather around them a corps of disciples sufficient for the creation of an attractive social
movement. Many ethnographies have shown how easy it is for such small movement
organizations to attract new members from the general pool of anomic ―seekers‖ that can
always be found within the population of an urbanized mobile society.
The model does attempt to account for how some percentage of these ordinary members
are turned into deployable agents. The initial attractiveness of the group, its vision of the
future and/or its capacity to bestow seemingly limitless amounts of love and esteem on the
new member are sufficient inducements in some cases to motivate a new member to
voluntarily undergo this difficult and painful process of resocialization.
H1. Ideological totalism is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the brainwashing
process. Brainwashing will be attempted only in groups that are structured totalistically.
However, not all ideologically totalist groups will attempt to brainwash their members. It
should be remembered that brainwashing is merely a mechanism for producing deployable
agents. Some cults may not want deployable agents or have other ways of producing them.
Others may want them but feel uncomfortable about using brainwashing methods to obtain
them or may not have discovered the existence of brainwashing methods.
H2. The exact nature of this resocialization process will differ from group to group but, in
general, will be similar to the resocialization process that Robert Lifton and Edgar Schein
observed in Communist re-education centers in the 1950s. For whatever reasons, these
methods seem to come fairly intuitively to charismatic leaders and their staffs. Although the
specific steps and their exact ordering differ from group to group, their common elements
involve a stripping away of the vestiges of an old identity, the requirement that repeated
confessions be made either orally or in writing, and a somewhat random and ultimately
debilitating alternation of the giving and the withholding of ―unconditional‖ love and
approval. H2 further states that the maintenance of this program involves the expenditure
of a measurable quantity of the collectivity‘s resources. This quantity is known as C, where
C equals the cost of the program and should be measurable at least at an ordinal level.
This resocialization process has baffled many observers, in my opinion because it proceeds
simultaneously along two distinct but parallel tracks one involving cognitive functioning and
the other involving emotional networking. These two tracks lead to the attainment of states
of hyper credulity and relational enmeshment respectively. The group member learns to
accept with suspended critical judgment the often shifting beliefs espoused by the
charismatic leader. At the same time, the group member becomes strongly attached to and
emotionally dependent upon the charismatic leader and (often especially) the other group
members and cannot bear to be shunned by them.
H3. Those who go through the process will be more likely than those who do not to reach a
state of hyper credulity. This involves the shedding of old convictions and the assumption of
a zealous loyalty to these beliefs of the moment, uncritically seized upon, so that all such
beliefs become not mere ―beliefs‖ but deeply held convictions.